Yesterday I participated in the Peterborough Ice Flow Race sponsored by the Ontario Underwater Council. This is one of those strange side line kind of things that scuba divers from Canada do to while away their winters and make things more exciting. Basically you get a team together and push giant-ass ice flows down the river wearing wet or dry suits, fins and scuba BCDs. It is not diving at all but you are in the water and kicking like mad.
To be honest that only real reason I took part was because this event sounded totally ridiculous and I just love that. There is nothing I enjoy more than seeing the blank looks on people’s faces when it comes up in conversation that I did ____ (enter ridiculous hobby or event here) on the weekend. The idea of pushing huge chunks of ice down a half frozen river fit this category nicely.
The teams could be anywhere from 8-16 members. Our team, The Frozen Frogs, had just 8 as that was as many folks as we could talk into the madness. The ice flows were twenty feet square and twelve to sixteen inches thick. This maybe doesn’t sound like much but if you consider the weight of a piece of ice this size you get some pretty impressive numbers. Ice weighs 92% of what water would weigh. If the ice flow was made of water and was 20’ X 20’ X 12“ it would weigh 24,971 pounds. As ice it would weigh 92% of that coming in at 22,973 pounds or just over 10 tons. Pretty impressive! It was stressed to us by the organizers that we really didn’t want to get caught between the ice flow and anything in its path. Good call!
The race was a staggered start with the seven teams leaving at five minute intervals with best overall time winning the prize. It was our first year so we really didn’t know what we were doing but we were told that the more you keep your ice flow in the current the better. Makes sense - let the river do the work. The starting position was sheltered just below a lock north of Peterborough Ontario and when we started it was all human power to get out in the river and catch the current. There was a bit of stress at the start as we were not sure if we would get out past the marker buoy in the river and if we hit that we would have been disqualified. We just squeaked by and were off. Once we were in the current and underway things steeled down a bit. We kicked pretty much the whole way through to the finish but also spent a lot of time moving around the ice flow to change our direction and steer. It was pretty hard work and by the time we crossed the finish line 59 minutes later I was definitely ready to stop kicking.
The winning team came in at just over 42 minutes and we were 5th overall which we felt pretty good about as it was our first year. Thanks to everyone involved particularly the OUC, my team led by the mighty Davis, Helen and Neil for putting us up and cheering so loud and to my darling Rebecca who gracefully volunteered to cook hot dogs that she can’t even eat for a bunch of ornery divers.
All the photos in this post are by Neil Muscott. Thanks Neil!
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